294 [Assembly 



dust called pollen, usually of a yellow color. This, when ripe, 

 discharges an elastic fluid mixed with minute grains called fovillay 

 which is considered to be the fecundating material. The anthers 

 are the same in number always in any one species, and almost 

 always the same in the genera. They vary very much in form^. 

 The study of pollen is one of the most curious parts of botany. 



Linnaeus established two modes of describing species and gene- 

 ra of plants, and true botanists have followed his example. 



In 1700 Tournefort gave in his (Institutiones rei Herbari£e) ac- 

 count of dried plants, the names and histories of one hundred 

 and forty botanists who had appeared since Hippocrates, who 

 lived 459 years before our Savior (now 2,313 years ago). We 

 find among them but one who arranged plants rationally. These 

 botanists were almost all doctors, and they studied^ more than 

 anything else, the medicinal virtues, real or supposed, of the 

 plants. In the year 1500 Conrad Gesner first instituted the first 

 genera from the peculiar characters of flowers. Other botanists 

 imitated him until Tournefort appeared. Superior to all his pre- 

 decessors, he put all botany into a crucible, reconstructed the 

 genera, and based them upon studies of the flowers and the fruits.. 

 Tournefort was enjoying the glory of being an illustrious botan- 

 ist, when one day walking in the street, in Paris, he was caught 

 between a cart and the wall, and was crushed to death in the 

 fifty-second year of his age. Linneeus followed him in botanical 

 research and high reputation. His father was a pious pastor at 

 Smolande, a small village of Sweden. He was born May 3dy 

 1707 J died at Upsal, January 10, 1778, in the same year with 

 Rousseau, Haller and Voltaire. Our great botanist, Laurent De 

 Jussieu, published in 1789 his great work, Genera Plantarum 

 Secundum Ordiues Natuiales disposita (or kinds of plants in their 

 natural order). 



The breathing of vegetables by their leaves has caused per- 

 plexity among philosophers, but Hales, the English savan, has 

 demonstrated it so clearly by experiment, that with or without 

 reasoning upon it, the fact is put beyond all doubt. When a 

 plant is thirsty it drinks moisture by its leaves from the atmos- 



